By Thomas Cotter (October 26, 2018, 2:48 PM EDT) -- Prior to setting technical standards for their products, standard setting organizations typically require their members to disclose any issued or pending patents that would read on a standard the SSO is considering, and to commit to licensing these standard-essential patents on (undefined) fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. Complex products such as smartphones comply with many different technical standards, and each standard may include hundreds or even thousands of SEPs. And since standards are, well, standard, there often are no feasible substitutes for these SEPs — which is another way of saying that each individual SEP is, in some sense, its own little monopoly....